


The Warden of Nordhagen Beach

by attackamazon



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Brotherhood of Steel (Fallout), Chivalry, Explicit Language, F/M, Fallout Kinkmeme, Flirting, Gunners, Happy Ending, Intimacy, Love at First Sight, Mercenaries, Minutemen, One Night Stands, Original Character(s), Redemption, Romance, Sex, Touch-Starved, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 17:12:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attackamazon/pseuds/attackamazon
Summary: Kinkmeme Prompt: A raider or some other enemy falls for Sole Survivor and tries to court her.She was a Brotherhood soldier.  He was a Gunner.  She should have killed him, but she saved his life instead and now he can't get her out of his head.  He has to know why.A love story.





	The Warden of Nordhagen Beach

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kinkmeme, but also a gift for a friend. You know who you are. :)
> 
> My stories are so gritty lately. I needed a break from the grimdarkness. I never write OC main characters, but the prompt called for this one and it was a nice change. Some may notice that Sole's background is slightly different than cannon, but one can only write so many snarky lawyers.
> 
> Also, I’m convinced that one day my one-shots are going to be longer than my long fics.
> 
> ***NOTE: there are a couple of graphic descriptions of injuries and violent acts in this piece. There is also a hell of a lot of cursing***

_"When that which makes a warrior hard is met with beauty offered most tender, then can he find love." ~ The Serpent of Venice, Christopher Moore_

  
It had been a good run, Stock thought grimly, grunting with pain as he unsuccessfully tried to staunch the blood flow from more bullet wounds than he had hands to work with.

Actually, it had been a pretty goddamned terrible run, right from the beginning, but that was just life in the Commonwealth.  At least with the Gunners he’d had it better than most of the poor bastards out there. Better a raider than a dirt-scraping settler.  Better a merc than a raider.

Up until that dipshit new commander decided to swing his dick around and pick a fight with a couple of Brotherhood tin cans, anyway.  That idiot was going to get more than a fist in the face when Stock finally caught up to him in hell.

No regrets, he reminded himself fiercely as the ear-ringing finality of blood loss began to close in on him.  At least it was a professional and not one of those damned Minutemen amateurs that had done him in. They could have had better aim, though, the pricks.  A gut wound was a dirty way to go.

Propped against the rough wood and scrap metal wall of the barricade, Stock finally cursed and gave in at last.  He’d spent his last stimpack weeks ago without a resupply, so his number was up. He let his limbs go limp and turned his effort towards breathing as deeply as his spasming, blood-filled lungs would allow instead.  Mercifully, the creeping numbness dulled the agony of the wounds.

He’d survived longer than most of the canon fodder.  Long enough to be promoted to sergeant. Long enough to know that a couple suits of T-60 were not worth wiping out a whole platoon over.

Voices reached his ears and his calloused hand pawed reflexively for his sidearm.  Not that it would make a difference, but maybe he’d get one more shot off before he passed out.  If he could take just one of those hotshot flyboys with their fancy power armor with him, he could even die happy.

Heavy mechanical footsteps approached and Stock gripped his gun, using every last bit of his focus to remain conscious.  The grey hulk of power armor became visible in the very corner of his eye, the Brotherhood insignias standing out red against the dark metal.  To Stock’s surprise, the voice that he heard next was female.

“There’s one still alive, Paladin.  Badly injured.”

“Put him down,” a stern male voice responded from somewhere beyond the barricade.

Stock felt his failing heart skip.  No chance of getting a kill shot through all that steel plating unless he could shoot the fusion core out of it and that was impossible from this angle.  Damn. Robbed of his vengeance, he clenched his teeth and waited for the inevitable lightning strike impact of a bullet through his skull.

The Brotherhood soldier edged a little closer and further into his field of vision.  Enough for Stock to see her face.

She had popped her helm already.  Definitely a woman. Young, but not some feckless kid. Even sweaty, covered in dark smudges of oil and grime, he could tell that she was pretty.  Not one of the scarred, mean-mugged viragos that he’d met among the Gunners. Eyes as blue as a clear, cold day in winter frowned back at him, conflicted.

“He’s incapacitated.”

“Finish him off, soldier,” her comrade, evidently her superior, insisted tersely. “No Gunner would think twice about killing you in the same condition.”

True enough, Stock had to admit, although a woman might be allowed to linger a little longer if she was in good enough shape to interest one of the boys.  He wished the bitch would quit stalling and get it over with. Of all the luck to end up being done in by some fumbling green recruit, even if the angel of death was easy on the eyes.

“Should listen to your CO, rookie,” he gurgled at her menacingly.

At this range a headshot would have been all but a sure thing, but his head was pounding and his arm was too much dead weight now to steady the gun enough to aim.  Ah, well. He’d tried.

“Danse, I --,” the woman balked, turning her gaze up plaintively, but the officer wasn’t having it.

“That was an order, Knight.”

The subordinate winced and looked down again, her expression pained.  She raised her rifle.

“I’m sorry.”

The laugh that hacked out of Stock’s throat carried more than a little blood with it.

“You’re givin’ me hope for reincarnation, rookie,” he gasped, grinning up at death as well as he could through bloody teeth. “Nobody’s this dumb after just one lifetime.”

His eyes closed and his body jerked reflexively as the brief spray of gunfire deafened him, but no bullets ripped through his flesh to end the pain.  With the roar ringing in his ears, his eyes opened once again and he squinted up, shocked, at the woman who stood over him. She glanced quickly over his head beyond the barricade, then she knelt, reaching into the cargo slip on the outside of her armored torso.

“Leave it, Knight.  Let’s move out,” the officer’s voice rapped out, but without the edge in it this time.

It was only then that Stock realized what had happened.

The bullets had all hit the barricade a foot or two to his right.  The soldier knew that her commander could not see whether he was dead or not and she was banking on the man being too eager to move on to confirm the kill.  He stared up at her aghast, gritting his teeth at the sharp needle jab as she covertly plunged a stimpack into his chest, injecting it.

“Just checking for anything useful, Paladin,” she said meaningfully without breaking eye contact with Stock.  

As he felt the sting and rush of the drug take effect, sealing his wounds and painfully realigning everything inside of him that had been shot to hell, the message could not have been more clear.  

_Stay down.  Stay quiet. Don’t make me regret this._

And then she was gone.  He heard the heavy tramp of her footsteps as she rose and moved to rejoin her commander.

“You’re going to have to lose that medic mindset, soldier,” he heard the Paladin remonstrate as the two moved away.  “It’s commendable, but not everyone out here is worth saving. Especially Gunners. I expect direct orders to be followed immediately.”

“Understood, sir.”

Stock waited until he could no longer hear them before staggering to his feet.

Every square inch of his body was sore and he hadn’t felt so weak and light-headed since his trainee days years ago, but the stimpack had saved him from the brink of death.  He turned and shaded his eyes, looking out in the direction that the Brotherhood of Steel soldiers had left, utterly bumfuzzled as to why he was still alive. The Brotherhood never took prisoners and never gave quarter to their enemies.

But she had spared him.  She had no reason to. She had no right to.  She had even risked getting busted by her superior to do it.  Why?

“What the fuck?” Stock whispered to himself but no answer was forthcoming.

Self-preservation kicked in then.  He scrounged through the remains of his platoon-mates, took what useful supplies he could find, and pissed on the mangled carrion that had been his former commander before turning and moving as quickly as he could down the ruined highway.

He’d have a story by the time he reported back to the nearest command center, but he’d leave the woman out of it for now.  There couldn’t be too many pretty blonde Brotherhood of Steel bucket jockeys out there and command might get it in their heads to put a bounty on her in vengeance.  A favor for a favor. As he bedded down for the night in the back of a rusty old van, though, he couldn’t get her face out of his mind.

Who the hell was she?

~~0~~

The rain-washed streets of Goodneighbor shone in the lamplight as an overcast day passed into a moonless night.  Stock eyed the drifters that passed by warily, pulling his flat top cap further down to obscure the tattoo above his left eyebrow.  He kept his hands close to his pockets. Liberty didn’t come so often that he could afford to ruin his good mood by putting a bullet in a pickpocket or one of the upstart gang members that swaggered around like they owned the town.

Goodneighbor was one of the few towns that were happy to turn a blind eye to Gunners so long as everyone kept the peace.  Best that it stay that way.

The few others that he had traveled with started to scatter off to their own diversions.  Some had chems or other contraband to buy. Some had girlfriends or whores to visit. Stock saw a couple head down to the Third Rail, eager to get their drink on.  He’d ultimately end up there, deep in the swill that Whitechapel Charlie passed off as beer, but time enough for that when he had a place to stumble back to and sleep it off.  

He turned his steps to the Hotel Rexford, ignoring the passing leer of a ghoul streetwalker in a ridiculous platinum blonde permed wig and battered leather coat.  Too many ghouls in Goodneighbor for his taste, but they did lend to the seedy ambiance of the place. There was something about the rotten melange of cheap booze, tobacco smoke, piss, and garbage that felt homey to Stock.  Maybe it was homesickness for the cesspit that he’d started out in. Maybe it was just the assurance that there was always further down to go. It was why he kept coming back, although there were better places to buy a drink and a quick fuck than Goodneighbor.

A flash of blonde hair caught the corner of Stock’s eye again and he turned, sure that it was that damned ghoul following him.  They were persistent, the whores here, willing to suck every last cap out of a man through his dick if that’s what it took. But it was no ghoul and no streetwalker that his eyes landed on.  Instead, the face that appeared in the hazy streetlight outside the Memory Den turned the tumblers on one of the most confusing mysteries in his life. Stock stared.

The woman would have been worth looking at in any case.  She was tallish with hair the color of sweet sunshine that fell in a wave around her shoulders and a heartbreaker face that he would have known anywhere.  It was _her_ \- that Brotherhood rookie that had spared his life back at the outpost.  He was absolutely sure of it.

He had thought about her almost daily over the last few months since the incident, labelling her “Angelface” in his mind since he didn’t know her name.  Why had she put herself out to help him? What was a woman like that - obviously not yet chewed up to hell and back by the wasteland - doing tromping around the Commonwealth in power armor with the goddamned Brotherhood of Steel anyway?  Stock had resigned himself to never knowing the answers and then there she was back in his sights. The coincidence was too great to ignore.

Casually, so as not to draw attention to himself, he stopped and leaned back against the brick wall of the State House as if about to light up a cigarette.  After the initial surprise, he didn’t want to be too obvious about watching her. Angelface did not seem to have seen him yet and he couldn’t be sure whether she would recognize him.

She was out of uniform, he noted, dressed inconspicuously in a leather coat belted over trousers.  Interesting. Goodneighbor was the last place in the Commonwealth where anyone in Brotherhood colors would feel at ease and he knew they rarely let their flyboys stray far from their posts anyway. Angelface was outside of her territory, but evidently not on official business.  If she was on leave, why would she spend it in a dump like this and not Diamond City?

The woman looked both ways along the street for just a moment and then crossed the square in the direction of the Third Rail.  She passed almost within arms-length of Stock, but did not glance in his direction. Close enough for him to get a better look at her face, though.

All cleaned up and out of her rig, she was more than just pretty.  She had the soft hair and clear skin of someone who hadn’t been roughing it out in the elements for long - a rare fair thing in the wasteland.  Sheltered. Vault dweller, he thought, but then she might have come in on that airship fresh from some Brotherhood enclave. He’d heard rumors in passing, but never given them much thought.

It was her expression, though, that heightened his curiosity the most.  She had the exhausted look of someone who had been through some shit recently.

Stock turned the corner and watched as she disappeared into the Third Rail, considering his options.  It was too good of an opportunity to miss. If she was slumming it in Goodneighbor, there had to be a reason for it and everyone’s tongue was looser after a drink or two.  Maybe he’d get the chance to find out her name, at least. He waited a few minutes so as not to seem conspicuous and then followed her into the bar.

The Third Rail was smokey and stank of beer, sweat, and desperation, but Whitechapel Charlie was doing brisk business all the same.  Stock’s eyes quickly found the table where his Gunner comrades were settled down in one corner and lifted his chin in silent acknowledgement as they nodded to him in return.  That siren Magnolia was working her magic on the stage, but as much as he usually like to sit and enjoy the view, he had other business tonight.

Angelface was finding a seat at the end of the bar.  He watched as she removed her coat and neatly folded it before sliding onto a barstool and ordering a drink.  She had, he thought without an ounce of shame, an exquisite ass beneath those dark trousers. There was an unselfconscious grace to the way she moved, too, that made something in the back of his brain heat and a few less cerebral curiosities come to mind.

Evidently he was not the only one to notice either.  In the time it took for Stock to reach the bar and put his own order in with Charlie, she already had one of those dickhead Triggermen with his tacky trenchcoat and fedora leering in her face and asking to buy her a drink.

“That’s kind of you, but, no, thanks.”

“Just trying to be friendly, sweetheart.  Haven’t seen you around here before. I’m the welcome wagon.”

“Maybe some other time.”

He remembered that voice as much as her face.  Low, well-spoken, confident, and dead calm despite her obvious discomfort with the cretan standing next to her.  Stock watched out of the corner of his eye to see how she would handle it. If she was Brotherhood, she must be capable of defending herself.

“Don’t be that way, baby.  Give me a chance. Doll like you shouldn’t be buying for herself.”

The idiot put his hand on Angelface’s shoulder then and Stock waited for her to lose her composure, either to smack it off in anger or shrink away in fear.  He was pleasantly surprised and further intrigued when she did neither of those things.

Carefully, the woman reached up and took the Triggerman’s wrist, firmly removing it from her shoulder and dropping it at his side.  She fixed him with a smile coupled with a very pointed stare. There was a note of tactful finality in her voice. A last warning.

“I’m flattered, but I’m not looking for company.  Try one of the other ladies. Have a good evening.”

With that, she made a show of turning back to the bar, signalling that the conversation was over.  The Triggerman did not take the broad hint.

“What, are you waiting for someone?”

Stock made a calculated decision and determined that it was a good time to intervene if he wanted any chance of talking to her.  He accepted the bottle of stout from Charlie and ambled down the bar.

“Yeah,” he interjected gruffly.  “Me.”

The Triggerman turned, scowling and ready for a confrontation, but he cut off his snide reply sharply when he saw who was standing behind him.  At just under six feet tall, Stock wasn’t the biggest man in the bar, but he was big enough to make most of the scum in these parts think twice.  Having a few extra years on him in addition to the hard conditioning from more than a decade with the Gunners didn’t hurt either, implying experience and a tendency to win when he tangled with someone.  Even with his Gunner drab toned down for the civvies, there were few people willing to risk fucking with someone who looked able to tear a chunk out of their ass and feed it to them.

“Not worth it anyway,” the Triggerman muttered and stalked away under Stock’s glare.

Assured that he was not going to be sucker punched as soon as he turned around and feeling Angelface’s serious gaze weighing his intent, Stock settled himself carefully onto the bar stool next to her.  He didn’t make eye contact, just set his beer down and shrugged casually.

“Don’t worry about me.  Just gonna sit here a minute. Make sure that limpdick doesn’t get it into his head to circle back around.”

Stock could feel the prickle of her eyes searching him for clues and wondered if she was trying to remember his face.  She turned back to the bar, taking a slow sip from her glass of dark red wine. They sat in silence for a few more moments before he heard her voice again.

“What’s your name?”

He held in a grin of triumph, keeping his tone aloof and short.  “Thought you weren’t looking for company.”

Angelface shot him a narrow, sideways look, but it was ruined by the smirk that formed on her pretty lips.

“You’re not company.  I just want to be able to identify the body if that goon comes back with his friends.”

Pretty and mouthy.  This one was a full threat.  Stock allowed himself to smile at last.

“Blackstock.  ‘Stock’ to those that know me.  Which you do, now, I guess. Do I get yours?”

She regarded him shrewdly for a moment - those blue eyes lingering on his face just a fraction longer than he would have expected - and then she shook her head.  Her tone, though, was deliberate and warm when she replied.

“No. I will buy you another beer, though, before you go, Mr. Blackstock.  Fortune favors the bold.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he agreed, feeling the evening’s possibilities expand unexpectedly around him.

~~0~~

One drink turned into several.  

After the first, they moved to a more private table.  Magnolia’s sultry voice flowed through the room around them like the best top shelf bourbon as the bar’s patrons came and went, drinking, laughing, and pairing off for a night of bad decisions.  Angelface - she still would not tell him her name - toyed with her wine glass and seem to relax under the influence of the alcohol and the music.

“Where are you from?,” he asked her, leaning on the table over his beer and enjoying the view now that her thick coat was set aside and he could make out the hourglass shape of her body.  “Because you sure as hell don’t belong in this shithole.”

This seemed to amuse her.  The way her lips curved and her eyes glinted humor made a hot prickle of desire spread up his neck and through his gut.  Or maybe that was the beer.

“What makes you think that I would tell you?”

“You’re here talking to me,” he pointed out confidently, “so you must have seen something you like.”

She inclined her head in a “fair enough” sort of way, but she didn’t answer the question.  Stock grinned, emboldened.

“So, you won’t tell me your name or where you’re from.  Got something to hide, Angelface?”

Shit.  He had dropped his pet name for her without thinking about it - the one she didn’t even know she had.  He waited to see how she would take the moniker and was relieved when she didn’t scowl at him. She settled her chin onto her hands, the corner of her mouth tipping up a little higher wistfully.  There was a story behind that smile, he thought to himself - something fragile, too close to the surface tonight for her to fully hide it.

“Don’t we all?” she inquired, but it sounded like a genuine question this time, neither flippant nor evasive.

Stock looked back into her eyes and, trusting his instinct, decided to throw all of his caps into the game.

He reached a large hand out across the narrow table and traced his fingers idly along her elbow, feeling the soft warmth of her skin.  She did not move to push him away like she had the Triggerman, nor did her gaze become hard or uncomfortable. He allowed his palm to settle on her forearm, his thumb massaging a lazy circle across the gooseflesh that rose there.

“Everyone’s got secrets.  Trade you a few of mine for a few of yours.”

They switched from beer and wine to whiskey and then they quit the heat of the full bar for the cold street outside.

“You’re a soldier,” she ventured as they walked slowly under the amber street lights.  

Their breath steamed in the still air and Stock had to work hard to keep his eyes off of her.  Her cheeks had blushed a shade of pink from the alcohol and the chill. The mazed light cast shadows and hardened the lines of her face and body in a way that made him want to catch her and hold her still just so that he could look at her and memorize the moment.  Too many women had come and gone for Stock to bother remembering them anymore, but after wondering about her for so long he wanted to pause and enjoy this one for as long as she would allow it.

If nothing else, he wanted to send her back to the Brotherhood with him in her head as firmly as she had been stuck in his.  It seemed only fair.

“So are you.”

She glanced at him for that, an eyebrow arching suspiciously, and Stock thought quickly.  He shrugged as if it were obvious.

“Saw you tuck your holotags in when you took your jacket off earlier.  Smart. Brotherhood’s not popular in Goodneighbor.”

She seemed to buy it, so he pressed his luck.

“You don’t strike me as the death-to-mutant-scum, permanent-stick-up-the-ass type.  How’d you get mixed up with the Brotherhood?”

He didn’t expect a real answer - most soldier types had it beaten into them early on to play it tight to the chest where their work was concerned - and he was surprised when she didn’t take evasive maneuvers as she had with his other questions.

“It’s not a very flattering story.”

“Angelface,” he laughed, exhaling a cloud into the cold night, “my whole life is fucking unflattering. Tell me.”

“I got lost,” she admitted.  

He could see that it was not a pleasant memory, but she seemed able to laugh at herself about it now.

“I hadn’t been in the Commonwealth for very long and I was trying to make it to Diamond City alone.  Not the most intelligent decision I’ve ever made, I have to say. Ferals found me and chased me right into a Brotherhood recon team under siege by another pack of ghouls.  That was a hell of a fight. I’m still not sure how we pulled through, but we did. When it was over, I treated their wounded and helped them dig in to wait for reinforcements.  Their commander saw that I had some useful skills and offered to enlist me. I knew that I was in over my head out there on my own. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“You’re a medic?” Stock asked, eagerly picking up on the telling detail.

That would explain why she had hesitated to put him out of his misery and why she had seemed so green out there.  She must have only had a few months experience, if that, as a soldier at the time and her instinct was still to save a dying man rather than kill him.  Angelface shrugged, although he could see a shadow pass across her features for a moment.

“I was a doctor in another life, although I didn’t have the chance to practice for very long before--” she paused and he could hear a weariness in her sigh.  She continued without finishing the sentence. “I was a civilian, but I treated soldiers. I never thought that I would become one myself.”

To his surprise, he felt her hand slip around his arm then, resting firmly on his bicep as if he could be confused for some sort of polite gentleman escorting her home.  Her tone warmed, becoming almost playful.

“You, though - you’re a mercenary if I’ve ever seen one.”

He chuckled at that, although his brain was suddenly full of very different images as he felt her body close to his, the side of her breast grazing his arm.

“No shame in earning an honest living.”

“Killing for caps,” she remarked, but lacking the derisive accusation that he had always heard in that phrase.  He had the idea that she was teasing him, so he played into her game, teasing back.

“We all kill for caps, sweetness.  Some just like to fool themselves into believing they do it for more honorable reasons.”

“You think so?”

“How long do you think your Brotherhood boys would hold the line if they weren’t being paid?”

They had reached the dead end in front of Hotel Rexford.  She stopped at the front steps and turned towards him. The night had taken on a surreal cast.  Stock could feel the whiskey doing its job, creating a soft halo around the lamps and carrying him outside the shitty reality of their surroundings into some mythic other place where nothing was coincidental and everything was possible.  Looking at her face, he could tell that the same was true for her, too.

Her hand was still on his arm and he felt the individual pressure of each of her fingertips through his jacket.  There was a question mark in her expression. She searched his eyes for the answer and Stock would not disappoint.  He stepped closer, daring to let a hand slide beneath the curtain of her hair to caress the elegant column of her neck.  He relished the shiver that went up her spine as he saw a little of that calm slip. She leaned into the touch and that was all Stock needed to know.

“You’ve been up in that airship too long,” he observed, hearing his own voice as a warm growl now. “Maybe you got a ship full of heroes up there in the clouds, but down here we’re all survivors.  That what you came here to remember, Angelface? Life outside of your steel rig?”

He could feel the pulse in her throat speed against his hand as she gazed back at him, conflicted emotions warring behind her eyes.  At last, her lip catching between her teeth, she decided something. Stock felt her hand slide from his arm. The surprise of her fingers brushing his face, traversing across the roughness of tomorrow’s stubble on his cheek, sent a spike of pleasure through him and sharpened the building appetite below  It really had been too long, he thought, if all it took was a touch.

One finger settled just beneath the brim of his cap, pushing it very slightly up and pressing right over the dark, blocky “O-” that had been tattooed onto his forehead almost a decade ago.  He froze, suddenly on his guard as he realized that she had known what he was all along. Her eyes never left his, though - depthless sky blue that Stock felt himself fall into completely as she closed the last bit of distance between them, leaning in until her lips were mere inches from his ear.  The low whisper that fell on him hardened his cock almost instantly and forced the insistent need boiling in the back of his brain to critical mass.

“Are your reasons so different?”

Fair point, but he would have followed her into that hotel then no matter what she had said.  She had already checked into a room earlier. Her cold fingers laced tightly into his own as they ascended the stairs and Stock marvelled at how the evening had exceeded his modest expectations.

Fortune favored the bold, she had said.  He was about to find out how far that held true.

~~0~~

They were barely in the shabby, musty room before Stock was kissing her.  

She tasted like sweet wine and sharp whiskey and no kiss had ever been more perfect than that.  He closed the door and pressed her back against it. Her arms wrapped around his waist as he leaned against her, caution flung to the wind now that they were alone.  Even he was surprised at the animal intensity of the growl that came out of him as his hands roamed her, moving through her open coat and sliding under her shirt to grasp a breast.

Angelface broke from the kiss, gasping.  Her face was flushed, her lips red and open so close to his own that he could feel the heat of her blush on his cheeks.  Her heart pounded beneath his hand. She wanted him. He could feel it radiating through her skin, but she hesitated. He watched as she turned her face to the side, closing her eyes, and realized that she was trembling very slightly.

If she had been just another whore or chem-addled drifter, it wouldn’t have stopped him.  He wasn’t proud of it, but he had fucked more than a few women who were scared shitless of him when he was hard up.  This was different. She had paused for him there on the road when she had decided to save his life. Stock knew that he owed her the same courtesy and he was curious besides.  He eased his touch - not retracting, just waiting. Letting her breathe as he decided what to do.

It wasn’t him that she was afraid of, that much was evident.  She wouldn’t have left the bar with him or brought him to her room if she was.  He could feel the hard lump of her sidearm at her belt beneath her shirt and there was more muscle on her than he’d thought now that he had his hands on her.  If she really wanted to, she could defend herself. It was the way her body tensed under his touch and the way he saw her trying to control that response now that gave him the clue he needed.  

The Brotherhood pushed harsh discipline and restraint on their recruits just like the raiders pushed chems.  She had obviously been running operations in the field for awhile. It could have been months since she had been with anyone.  Or maybe she just had the voice of that tight-ass CO of hers in her head calling her down for letting some Gunner trash lay hands on her.

“Been awhile?” he soothed, slowing his pace.  She groaned softly as he kissed her neck, nuzzling against the pulse there as he thumbed a nipple lazily. “Don’t tell me none of those flyboys are taking care of you.”

Angelface drew in a deep breath and then he felt her body finally soften.  A hand ran up his back, the fingers caressing into the short, dark high and tight stubble of his hair.  Her face turned and rested gently in the juncture of his neck and shoulder. He could feel the soft skin of her lips and her warm breath there and the unexpected sweetness of the gesture paralyzed him.  There was no acting in it, no whore’s trick, no show for his benefit. Her arms almost cradled him, adjusting to the feel of his body and deciding to give him hers. Stock found himself poised there, cheek to cheek, drinking in the novelty of the touch.

“Would you believe me,” she murmured, “if I told you that I haven’t had sex in two hundred years?”

He chuckled at the exaggeration, but her point was made.  He drew back, giving her space, and leaned his palms onto the door behind her.  She looked up at him and Stock nodded, smiling.

"Not my usual kind of contract, Angelface.  But I think I can help you out with that.”

He took his time peeling the clothes from her and enjoying what he found beneath them.  She had a body to go to fucking war over - all lean muscle, gentle curves, and full tits that would have made an artist weep.  There was a long scar low on her belly, the skin slightly loose and puckered around it, but he was not without his own scars. Stock let her undress him and explore his body in return, closing his eyes and glorying in the feel of her hands and lips tracing his flesh as her shyness gradually fell away.

Long limbs wrapped around him as she finally drew him down onto the bed with her.  It was a struggle not to lose control when he heard her first gasping moan with a nipple between his teeth and his fingers brushing her clit.  He forced himself to linger and read the way that her body writhed at his touch, her warm reception making him feel cocky in more ways than one.  In the end it was the soft cry of his name as his fingers slid into her that Stock lost himself to.

He couldn’t remember the last time that he had fucked someone who had actually wanted him for no other purpose.  Looking back, maybe he never had. Whores were in it for the caps, although some were good enough at the game to pretend.  Junkies were in it for the chems he could trade them. Hell, even the few settler girls that he’d picked up over the years were in it on the hope that fucking a Gunner would spare their homestead or keep them alive for a little while longer.  

The nameless woman beside him didn’t need anything from him.  If anything, he owed her, although she would probably never know that. So, he gave her his best, letting her obvious pleasure sharpen his own.

She came, mewling and shuddering in his arms, and Stock rolled with her until he was above her, settling between her thighs.  His cock jutted against her like a god damn steel rod, painfully hard and aching now, but he let her ride out her climax. When her eyes opened again and found his, the look in them melted something in him that he knew had been frozen for a very long time.

He had seen a lot of things out in the wasteland, but he was damn sure that he had never seen anyone look at him like that before.

She wriggled beneath him, reaching between them to guide him into her as he slowly pushed past the slick folds of her sex with a gut-wrenching groan of relief until he was bathed completely in her heat.  She rocked against him, her kisses on his neck and her hands on his back and in his hair, encouraging him to let go. Stock gave in to his own furious need at last, consuming her with his hands and his mouth as he buried himself in her.  When he finally finished, growling out his release against her neck, it was with the angel chorus of her voice in his ears - soft ecstatic vowels that drove him over the edge.

They lay together for a long time, sweaty and spent, before Angelface extricated herself and went to wash.  She brought him a damp cloth from the basin on the dresser and, when he was done, curled back into his arms in the warm quiet of the room.  Stock pulled the thin blanket over them and relaxed into the hazy afterglow with a deep sigh.

This, too, was new.  Rare were the times when he wasn’t alone again before the sweat could cool on his skin, but Angelface seemed to want the closeness and he obliged her.  Her fingers toyed languidly with the small hairs on his chest. Her eyes were closed, her expression relaxed as if she were in the safest place in the world. He let his hand stroke through her hair and rest on the crown of her head as she reclined on his shoulder.

It was too perfect.  She was too perfect. Stock was half certain that he would wake up any moment to find himself alone in his bunk and his boxers a mess.

“Gotta say, Angelface,” he teased her when he felt her stir again, “if you’ve been saving that up for two hundred years, I’m glad you picked me out of all the strangers in that bar to let loose on.”

She shifted, looking up at him and there was an oddly poignant look on her face.  Her hand settled over the spatter of angry bullet scars on his stomach - one of his souvenir from their first encounter.

“We’re not strangers.”

There was no mistaking her meaning.  Stock stared at her, feeling his conception of the evening fall apart and then reassemble itself instantly.

She knew who he was.  Not just some random Gunner who had been brave enough to approach her in a bar, but _that_ Gunner.  The one that she had saved.  He almost pulled away from her in surprise, but caught himself.  She was waiting on his response, watching him process this bit of news.

He decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.  After all, he had been less than forthright, too, and he was the one who had approached her.  It made sense that she would want to play things close to the chest at first. It didn’t change the fact that she had chosen to be with him that night.  If anything, it explained why she had felt comfortable enough to attempt it: he had no reason to hurt her. With nothing to hide now, Stock would make the most of the opportunity.  He settled back down, allowing his fingers to resume stroking idly through her hair.

“I didn’t think that you would recognize me,” he explained, testing the water. “Hell, I wouldn’t have. I was pretty banged up that day.”

“You recognized me.”

He scoffed, but affectionately.

“It’s not every day a pretty woman in power armor saves my life, much less Brotherhood. You kind of stick in the memory, sweetness.”

She hummed a laugh through her nose, relaxing again and allowing him to wrap his arm further around her as she leaned her cheek back on his chest.  An unspoken agreement to forgive each other for their caution.

“How’d you know it was me?” he pressed, curious.

“Your eyes.” She shrugged. “And your tattoo.  O-negative. Universal donor. Not rare, but not common either.  I’ve only saved one Gunner’s life and he had type O-negative blood and green eyes.  Narrows down the field a little.” She added, smiling, “I wondered what happened to you.  I’m glad that you’re still alive.”

That admission floored him just as much as her previous one.  All these months that she had been stuck in his head, he had always assumed that he was nothing more than a random, unpleasant incident to her at best or a mistake at worst.  It had never crossed his mind that she might think about him, too. The idea that she would even be glad to see him alive was too foreign a concept to imagine.

Stock turned onto his side and she shifted to accommodate him, their bodies falling against each other like puzzle pieces.  The faint, blue glow of her holotags hanging in the valley between her breasts illuminated the darkness between them.

“Why?” he asked earnestly, finally able to throw out the question that had been stuck in his brain for the last three months. “I tried my damndest to kill you.  Fuck, I would have shot you up until the last minute if I could have. You had your CO right there ordering you to finish me off. Why did you help me?”

She looked at him for a long moment and he saw her eyes close, her expression turning pained as if fighting off some dark thought.  He reached out, stroking her cheeks and suddenly feeling like an asshole, but she collected herself quickly.

“My husband was a soldier.  Every day that he was away, I wondered if I would ever see him again.  I couldn’t save him in the end, but seeing you reminded me of my worst fears for Nate.  I could save you. If there was someone waiting on you, I could send you back to them. I did for you what I would have wanted someone to do for him - for any of the soldiers that I used to treat, really.  I gave you a chance to walk away. Everyone deserves that.”

Stock knew what a Gunner would say: she was weak.  She had let emotion influence her tactical decisions and she was lucky to be alive with that kind of foolishness.  Even her commander had told her that. The wasteland was brutal to the kind-hearted. Maybe it was just the afterglow, but he was moved all the same.  He didn’t understand it, but he couldn’t call it weakness. To have cared for someone so much that she couldn’t bear to pass that kind of pain on - he envied her dead husband that kind of devotion.  Even the little bit of it that had stuck to him tonight was more than he had ever deserved.

“You could have gotten your shit kicked by your commander,” he observed. “Don’t know about the Brotherhood, but where I come from that’s a good way to end up with a bullet in you for your trouble.”

Angelface laughed a little, recovering from the moment of sadness.

“I fessed up as soon as we were far enough away to be safe,” she admitted. “Danse is a good man and he took on a lot of risk by recruiting me the way he did.  I don’t make a habit of lying to him. He did read me the riot act, but I was honest enough to out myself and he understood my reasons. He went easy on me, considering.”

She was quiet for a moment, her hands idly smoothing over the myriad of scars, burns, tattoos, and a few faded track marks from his short career as a raider that marred his skin.  He saw her contemplate them, touching them each in turn now that the urgency of passion was sated - a medic tallying up the damage of his life.

“Been fighting for a long time,” he explained, preempting her questions. “Getting slow as the years catch up, I guess, or things might have turned out differently there on the highway that day.”

“Are you sorry they didn’t?”

“And miss this?”

He tweaked a nipple, making her giggle.  It was a light sound, almost girlish. Stock felt a measure of their earlier heat begin to return to him and he let his hands wander, pleased when he felt her respond in kind.

“Guess I should be glad that you like to live dangerously, Angelface.”

She kissed him and he felt her fingers curl around his tumescent cock, which quickly came to attention again in her hand.  He let her push him back, closing his eyes as she left a trail of soft kisses up his belly and chest before settling herself astride him.  Her lips found his again as she rubbed the cloven place more firmly against the underside of his dick and it dragged a hoarse curse from him as his fingers pressed into the flesh her hips.  She rose just enough to sink slowly down onto him, her breath sighing out against his cheek.

“You’re not dangerous, Stock,” she pronounced with that calm certainty of hers.  “And my name is Val. But ‘Angelface’ will do nicely.”

~~0~~

It was broad daylight when they finally woke.  Stock felt her stir in his arms and had to resist the urge to pull her back into the warm bed as she rose and began to collect the clothes that they had discarded all over the room.  He watched her from where he lay, the way her tits and ass moved as she bent to slide into her panties, scarcely able to believe that he’d had her to himself for a night.

Val - her name, he remembered with a spark of accomplishment - grinned at him and tossed him his battered fatigues

“Better get dressed before they come and kick us out for sleeping in.”

He had the feeling that the deliberate way she pulled on her clothes was entirely for his benefit and Stock couldn’t hide his grin or his arousal.  He wished there was more time.

She kissed him deeply and for a long while as they stood at the door of the room with their respective gear at their feet.  There was an odd pain in that, Stock found. He had never had trouble letting go before. Once she was out that door, the chances of them ever meeting again were slim to none. They both had lives to get back to.  Battles to fight. He tried to absorb as much of her there as possible so that he could conjure it later when he needed something to get him through a long night on sentry duty or the rough misery of the field.

“Was that payment enough for my life?” he teased her and she laughed.  

Her palms were cool on his cheeks.  Her smile tilted as she regarded him.

“You can settle the score by not getting yourself killed out there.  You’re too good for the Gunners. Whatever they’re paying you, you’re selling yourself too cheaply. I don’t want to meet you again under the same conditions as the first time.”

The statement struck deep before Stock could prepare for it.  No one had ever given a shit about what happened to him. Not the wreck of a family that he’d left behind.  Not any of the assholes that he fought next to in the Gunners, certainly. Most of them would put a bullet in his head themselves without blinking if it came down to it and his commanders were worse.  Then here was this woman, who barely knew him from Adam’s housecat but had given him his life and a night that he would be thinking about till he was cold in the ground, telling him that he was worth something more than the caps his blood and sweat could buy.

“Same goes for you,” Stock told her seriously, feeling an odd heaviness in the back of his throat. “I’m grateful, but don’t take risks like you did with me.  Stick close to your unit. All those Brotherhood boys are rattling around with a bunch of loose bolts in their heads, but they seem to look after their own. That CO sounds like he’s got your best interests in mind.  Listen to him. Don’t end up like I did.”

They descended the stairs and stepped out into bright sunshine.  Stock felt his chest constrict as she kissed him on the cheek one last time and he watched her walk away, pulling on her pack with her rifle slung over one shoulder

He could still smell her on his clothes and his body as he collected his groggy, hung-over, disgruntled comrades and struck out for home.

~~0~~

“So, uh, how was it, sarge?” one of the assholes asked several hours later as they moved in a tight group between the buildings along the junk littered road toward Mass Bay.

The kid had a shit-eating grin on his stupid face.  He was newly promoted from lowly conscript to private, his tattoo still fresh on his forehead, and seemed to think that it made him worth something. He was new enough that Stock hadn’t had the time to stomp the attitude out of him yet.  He glared at the kid.

“You got a death wish, maggot?”

Bragging about the women he’d fucked was a boy’s game anyway and Stock was too old for that shit, but what had happened in that room with Angelface would have been out of bounds all the same.

Val, he corrected himself.  She had given him her name and he would use it.  If he had been in a better mood and if she had just been some barfly that he had picked up for a night’s entertainment, he might have cut the kid some slack and played along.  But Val was no conquest. If anything, he was hers and every step that he took away from Goodneighbor that morning wound something inside of him tighter and tighter thinking about it.

“No offense, sarge,” the maggot continued, still grinning. “It’s just that we were taking bets on whether you’d manage to hook that slut in the bar last night and you won me the pot.”

The word “slut” fell on Stock’s ears like gasoline, fueling his irritation hotter.  He had no real justification for getting angry about it. He’d thrown that word around himself so much over the years that righteous indignation would be laughable.  All he knew was that hearing it applied to Val made him want to turn and smash his fist into the private’s face.

He restrained himself and kept up his stride instead.  Letting the kid get to him was losing the war to win a battle.  The insubordination, however, could not go unremarked.

“You should have been a blow job, private, you know that?” he growled in warning. “Call me ‘sarge’ one more time, you nutless puke, and I’ll unscrew your head and shit down your neck.”

There was silence on the marching line for another few minutes and then he heard the maggot whisper to the corporal beside him.

“Probably couldn’t get it up.”

The next sound was the cough and echo of Stock’s pistol, fired on a fast draw as he whirled on the the unfortunate private and dropped the maggot right on the pavement with a shot straight to the forehead.  The idiot went down with a look of dopey surprise still on his face. The others stopped dead in their tracks, raising their arms against the spatter of blood and brain matter, their expressions blank with alarm.  Stock stalked in front of them with his pistol still drawn and a ferocious scowl on his face.

“Any of you other sorry sacks of shit have something to say?”

Every single one of them clamped their lips shut immediately.  None of them looked him in the eye. Stock saw the corporal that the dead private had been talking to turn pale underneath the bloody splash of gore on his face.

“If I hear a single fucking word between here and base, I will personally shoot the balls off of every one of you motherfuckers.”

He waited, fuming, as the remaining soldiers quickly stripped the gear from the dead Gunner and then resumed the march at a faster pace.  The only sound for miles was that of boots slapping on pavement behind him.

No one would miss the dead private.  A kid like that would have gotten his head blown off in the end anyway, if not by Stock then by the next officer that he mouthed off to.  Stupidity like that did not survive long in the Gunners and Stock had a rank to protect. One uppity maggot unchecked could turn the discipline of a whole platoon and that could be deadly.  It wasn’t the first time he’d had to make an example. Still, the killing settled uneasily on him this time.

 _I gave you a chance to walk away.  Everyone deserves that_.

Val would have spared the kid.  Mouthy or not, she would have let him live to do better just like she had let Stock live to do better.  She might have understood his reasons, but Stock could imagine her disappointment in him as clearly as if she were standing there right in front of him.  It cut him like a damned bayonet to the chest.

He knew that it shouldn’t matter.  She shouldn’t matter. He told himself that he needed to get his priorities back in line instead of letting one night of pussy - no matter how exceptional - cloud his judgement.  That soft-hearted mercy of hers might fly in the Brotherhood, but it would get a Gunner killed quickly and there was no place for it in his life. There was no place for her in his life.

The Mass Bay high rise finally came into sight and, far from being relieved to be back home, he felt his heart sink.  He glared at the other soldiers as they avoided his gaze and disappeared into the building, scattering back to their bunks to rest before chow time.  Stock remained on the steps.

He was tired.  Physically from the walk and the sleep that he had forgone, but he realized that it was a deeper kind of tired than that.  Tomorrow would find him headed out on another contract where he would kill another bunch of poor bastards in order to earn enough caps to buy enough booze to forget about it until the next time.  Day in, day out. Year after year. Ten years of his life.

 _You’re too good for the Gunners_ , she had told him.   _Whatever they’re paying you, you’re selling yourself too cheaply_.

He had thought that he had a good thing going until he had met her.  Now, he looked around at the scenery of his life and realized how shabby it was in comparison - how grey and squalid and futile.  Survival above all, he had always told himself, but he was tired of just surviving. For one night, he felt like he had finally lived.  He had found something worth having. Now she was gone and it was like he had been allowed to see the fucking sunrise just once only to turn around and walk back into the darkness.

Stock told himself that it didn’t matter.  He tried to believe it. What the hell would he do with a woman like that other than ruin her life?  Why would she get herself mixed up with someone like him? They had filled a need for each other and gone their separate ways.  Nothing wrong with that. Happened all the time. Maybe she would think about him now and then up in that airship, but that would be all.  He had nothing to offer her. Hell, if her superiors ever found out that she had taken up with a Gunner, she would probably catch some serious trouble for it.  The Brotherhood didn’t seem like the type to take their security lightly.

She would move on.  The thought of one of those jackasses up there catching her eye eventually made Stock’s gut hurt.  They might be a bunch of jarheads with a third of a personality to share between them all, but a Brotherhood soldier could meet her on equal ground.  He could give her a future where he wasn’t living contract to contract with the knowledge that his life was worth less than the gear on his back to those above him.  He wouldn’t have to worry about coming across her in the field again one day and having to make a snap decision to shoot the only good thing in his life or be shot himself.  A Brotherhood soldier would at least be there close to her.

An insane idea occurred to Stock.

There couldn’t be that much of a difference between Gunner life and the Brotherhood of Steel.  Same hierarchical politics, same orders, same killing people for caps, just with better toys and the facade of legitimacy and purpose.  War was the same on the ground no matter who you fought for by his observation. What did it matter which crewcut in power armor he was getting his orders from?

“Fuck it,” he whispered hoarsely.

He pulled his ruck off and did a quick check of his supplies.  The Brotherhood base at the old airport was a good day or two’s hike away.  He had food, ammunition, and water enough to hold him that long. Traveling the wasteland alone was dangerous, but he’d done it before and knew the areas to avoid and where to take shelter.  There was no guarantee that the Brotherhood would even take him on, but an experienced soldier was hard for any outfit to turn down and he could sweeten the pot by offering to turn intel on the Gunners.  He’d salute whatever bullshit they threw at him if it meant seeing Val again.

He remembered the look in her eyes as she had told him not to get himself killed.  Whatever she thought of him, she had cared enough to want better for him and believed that he could be better if he wanted to be.  If there was even a small chance that he could make something of that and prove her right, it was enough to gamble on.

The sentries on duty were giving him odd, wary glances now, but Stock no longer cared.  He shouldered his ruck, rebelted the straps, and scanned the ruined city before him. Maybe five hours of travel time before nightfall.  Enough to make a decent start.

He would be a dead man if the Gunners ever caught him on their turf again after walking off AWOL like this, but better dead than stuck in this dead end life no matter what happened.

~~0~~

It took Stock a day and a half to reach the airport.  The Brotherhood airship hung over the sea, casting a forbidding shadow over the grey-brown waves.  It was eerie to see something that massive airborne. The Gunners had a few vertibirds of their own, but nothing even remotely like the air superiority of the Brotherhood.

He stood on a rise, concealed by the ruins of an outbuilding, as he assessed the Brotherhood’s security detail.  There were at least two dozen of them patrolling the area and probably more that he had not yet seen. Most were in power armor.  In his Gunner greens, they might shoot him on sight. He knew that Gunners had poached a few vertibirds from the Brotherhood, killing the crews and making off with the aircraft.  Still, if he played his cards right and didn’t approach aggressively, it might lend to his cred with them, too. The Gunners were selective about who they let into their ranks and you died quickly if you didn’t have the skills and attitude to survive that life.  It could go either way.

Finally, after taking a long drink from his canteen and wolfing down a strip of brahmin jerky so that at least he wouldn’t die hungry, Stock sucked in the salty, fetid sea air and stepped out onto the road.

The sentries spotted him immediately, but they didn’t open fire.  He walked slowly and steadily, his long gun strapped harmlessly over his shoulder, and kept his hands visible.  A couple more suits of power armor joined those already at the gate as he approached. Every one of them carried a deadly-looking laser rifle.

“This is a restricted Brotherhood of Steel facility, civilian.  State your business,” one of the sentries crackled through his helmet as soon as Stock was within thirty feet of the checkpoint.  

He paused, feeling the tension curdle the air around him.  He couldn’t see the faces of the men, but he could feel their suspicion.  One wrong move and he’d be a pile of ash on the pavement.

“Heard you guys were recruiting extra guns. I’m here to join up.”

One of the tin cans - higher ranking than the others, Stock guessed from the different design painted onto his armor - stepped forward.

“The Brotherhood doesn’t hire mercenaries, civilian.”

Stock grinned, a flash of humor at the words that were about to come out of his mouth.  Who would have ever thought it would come to this?

“If all I wanted was another contract, sir, I wouldn’t have to come all the way down here to find one.  I’m here for the cause. About time I did something worthwhile.”

“He’s a Gunner, sir,” another sentry pointed out.

“I can see that, Knight.”  

The officer sounded terse.  Stock could feel himself under scrutiny and he never broke what he hoped was eye contact with the man, although it was hard to tell behind that helmet.

“We don’t take random wastelanders that wander up to our gates.  Someone would have to sponsor you. I don’t know of a single soldier here who would stick his neck out for a Gunner after what you people have done.  You’re out of luck. Leave.”

Damn.  Stock thought quickly.  He had suspected it wouldn’t be as easy as walking up and asking for a job, but he hadn’t known about the sponsorship requirement.  Before he could think better of it, he blurted out the first response that came to mind.

“There’s one who might. Ask . . .”

Shit, he didn’t know her full name.  He racked his brain, trying to remember how she and her commander had addressed each other that day out on the highway.

“Val.  She’s a Knight under Paladin Danse.  She knows me.”

The name drop got an almost immediate response.  A few of the guards glanced at each other and Stock prayed that he hadn’t just gotten Angelface into trouble.  The officer shifted, but he lowered his rifle a little. That was a good sign.

“What’s your name, civilian?”

“Blackstock.  Tell her I’ve come to make good on the debt I owe her.”

“I’ll send the message up.  Wait over there.”

Hours seemed to pass.  Stock sat on a rock next to the road watching the sentries watch him back and trying not to let his nervous energy overtake him.  If he had to walk away from here, he had no idea what his next move would be. He’d figure out something, but his life was about to get a lot more difficult if this little gambit didn’t work out.

A vertibird dispatched from the Prydwen, dropping and engaging the blades in mid air with a stomach-churning jolt.  It sunk down beyond the walls of the fortified airport. A short time later, Stock felt his heart leap as the sentries at the gate parted and two figures emerged.

His eyes immediately went to the woman, dressed in a dark green flightsuit with blonde hair pulled up into a tight bun.  It was Val. He would have known her anywhere. With her was a man in power armor - probably the Paladin, Stock thought, from the markings on the chest and arms of the rig.  He scrambled off of the rock, trying to make himself look presentable as they approached.

At closer range and with his helmet off, it was obvious that the Paladin was displeased.  He was about Stock’s own age, with dark eyes and an early five o’clock shadow on his jaw. He had the severe look of someone who spent all of his free time on armor maintenance and making sure the corners of his bunk were tucked in exactly right.  Val, on the other hand, smiled when their eyes met. The sight of it relieved a little of the tension in his chest, but he could tell that she was puzzled about his sudden appearance.

“Mr. Blackstock,” she greeted him formally, although he could hear the little bit of humor in her voice.  They had been naked together a little over two days ago after all. Still, she was on duty here and her commanding officer was standing right next to her. “Nice to see you again.”

“‘Nice’ isn’t a word that I would apply to a Gunner, Knight,” the Paladin corrected brusquely, sizing Stock up.  “Explain yourself, civilian.”

“I’m here to join the Brotherhood,” Stock repeated as confidently as he could, adding, “sir.”

He was rewarded by the sight of Val’s smile tipping up further in one corner and felt his heartbeat speed up in response.  She was pleased. He had been afraid that she wouldn’t come or that he would see her again only to watch her detach from him the way that he had done so often with other one night flings.  He felt a little bit of the knot in his stomach begin to unwind, but he knew that he wasn’t home free yet.

The Paladin’s expression was much more skeptical.  He glanced at his subordinate dubiously and then back at Stock.

“The Brotherhood doesn’t accept just anyone.  Why do you want to join?”

“Been fighting for caps for too long,” Stock grunted.  His eyes settled on Val’s and he willed her to understand the meaning behind what he said next. “That’s not enough anymore.  Feels too cheap. If I’m going to put my life on the line, it should be for something worth fighting for and the Brotherhood has the best shot of anyone of shaping this place up.”

It was the officer that he would have to convince, Stock knew, so he turned his gaze back to the Paladin.

“I’m a good shot.  I know the Commonwealth like the back of my hand.  I can take orders and give them and I can work smart under fire.  Sign me on and I won’t look back. Not like I can go back to the Gunners anyway after this.”

“‘I’m willing to sponsor him,” Val added, lending her voice to his suit. “We could use his experience and I’ll vouch for his character.”

The officer stared hard at Stock and he felt as if he were being deconstructed piece by piece.  Finally, the Paladin spoke.

“Wait here, civilian.” His gaze snapped down to Val. “A word, Knight.”

Stock retreated back to his rock and watched as the two Brotherhood soldiers moved away a few yards.  Luckily, the sea breeze was blowing in the right direction to carry snatches of their conversation and Stock strained for all he was worth to listen.

“Do you want to tell me something, soldier?  Like why there’s a Gunner on our doorstep asking for you by name?”

“Danse, you know me.  I wouldn’t be involved in anything that would jeopardize the Brotherhood or reflect badly on our mission down here.”

“I know that you have a distinct inability to differentiate between civilians who deserve our help and wasteland trash like that who don’t.  Sometimes I think you’d try to bandage up a wounded deathclaw and let it follow you home if we found one out there.”

“Well, you aren’t wrong.”

Stock was surprised at the informality of the conversation.  The Paladin seemed all business and he had expected to overhear a severe dressing down.  Instead, while it was still clear who was in charge, they spoke to each other more like friends than commander and subordinate.  He watched as Val crossed her arms, stepping closer to the armored officer and lowering her voice below what he could hear. Most of the rest of the conversation was lost, but he heard the Paladin’s deeper tones say “Gunners”, “risky”, and “take you down with him” and felt his heart sink.

At last, Val turned and walked back towards him while the Paladin hung back.  Stock waited with bated breath as she stopped in front of him and he searched her expression for clues.  The slant of her smile acknowledged his discomfort.

“Let’s take a walk.”

He followed her down the road a ways from the airport gate.  In the full light of day, she was even more beautiful than she had been in the lamplight.  Stock tried to keep his mind on his mission as she folded her hands behind her and drew in a deep breath.

“I honestly didn’t think that I would ever see you again,” she confessed, but there was nothing in the way she said it that sounded as if she were unhappy about it.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he retorted humorously and was gratified that she hummed a laugh at him.

It was obvious from Val’s face that she was trying to work up to something, though.  Better to get the bad news out of the way.

“No go, huh?” he asked gently, trying to make it easier on her and curb the disappointment in his voice at the same time.

“It’s complicated,” she conceded. “All I can do is offer to sponsor you.  What happened between us aside, I think you’re good for it. I would rather see you working for the Brotherhood than the Gunners and I know you risked a lot to come here.  Danse has to endorse the recommendation, though, and his superiors have to approve it. Sponsorship is a serious matter. My introduction to the Brotherhood was irregular; it’s usually a much longer process.  If I were your sponsor, I would be responsible for you in the same way that Danse is responsible for me. If you fail, I fail. If I fail, it reflects poorly on Danse, too. He has to consider the impact on all of us as well as your suitability.”

“All the more reason for me to make it work.”

His assertion seemed to have an effect on her.  Val was silent for a few paces and then stopped, facing him.  Her blue eyes searched his face frankly.

“Why did you come here, Stock?”

He could see that she already knew the reason.  She just wanted to hear it from him, spoken plainly now that they were out of earshot of anyone else.

“Because one night wasn’t enough,” he admitted honestly.

There was more to it than that, but those were the only words he could summon to describe what had circled around and around in his mind from the moment that he had seen her disappear around the corner in Goodneighbor until the moment he had seen her walk out of the airport gates.  It wasn’t enough. He wanted more, even if it was just to show her that she hadn’t wasted her effort on him. He wanted her to see that he would make good on the second chance that she had given him. He stumbled on.

“But what I told the Paladin was true.  I don’t know how to do anything but fight, but I want to fight towards something - not just around in circles for whoever has the caps.  I’m done with the Gunners. I’ll stick with this whatever happens with you and me.”

Stock watched her expression soften. He badly wanted to reach out for her, but he knew that it would be a mistake with all the eyes that were on them.  He forced himself to remain still, waiting.

“The answer isn’t ‘no’,” she told him at last. “Danse needs more before he’s willing to endorse the sponsorship.  The Gunners have been interfering with Brotherhood operations. You could be an asset, but you could also be a spy.  He has to weigh the risks before sending it up the chain of command. And then there’s the issue of fraternization.”

It took him a moment to realize what she was saying.  If she was worried about fraternization, then that meant she could imagine a future for them beyond the night that they had spent together in Goodneighbor.  Stock felt his hopes lift again.

“Angelface, all I want is a chance - with the Brotherhood and with you.  I know it’s not going to be easy, but I’d be one dumb son of a bitch not to bust my ass to make it happen.  If we have to wait until things settle down, then I’ll wait. Tell me what I need to do.”

Val reached into a cargo pocket of her uniform and pulled out a cloth bag that rattled with caps.

“I’m going to make your case, but it may take time.  We’re back on field ops tomorrow and I’ll be gone for at least a week.  Probably two. I should know something more solid by the time I get back. There’s a settlement down the coast a little ways.  Tell them ‘the General’ sent you and they’ll take you in. Just lay low. This should keep you while I’m gone.”

He accepted the caps and felt her fingers rest on his palm for a moment as she looked into his eyes, her brow knitting in concern.

“I can’t promise you anything, Stock.  I like you. I don’t want to hurt you. That night will stay with me, but I don’t know if I’m ready to be with someone again.  I don’t know if I ever will be. If I can’t--”

“Then you can’t. I’ll take the odds.”

Her fingers pressed hard against his for a moment and then she nodded, her lips quirking up into that same smile that cut right through him to the quick every time.

“I’ll come as soon as I can.  Take care of yourself,” she told him and he watched her go, jogging back along the broken road to rejoin the armored Paladin.

He waited until he saw them disappeared through the airport gates and then sighed, his hand clenching around the bag of caps that she had given him before shoving it into a pocket of his jacket.  Two weeks. The suspense of cooling his heels in some backwater settlement for that long would be murder, but it was better than nothing.

She was worth it.

~~0~~

Two weeks came and went.  Every day that passed overdue sunk Stock into a worse mood.

Good to Val’s word, the settlers had allowed him to stay as soon as he mentioned that the General had sent him, but they were wary.  There were two families huddled into shacks on the cold shore of the bay and, aside from putting together a pallet for him near the wood stove in the main house and setting aside a portion of food for him at meal times, they kept their distance.  The children dared each other to talk to him and scattered like frightened kittens whenever he turned his gaze in their direction.

There was no mistaking what he was - what he had been, anyway.  Stock had known going into this that his tattoo was not going to win him friends on the outside, but it didn’t bother him much if a bunch of soft dirt farmers were afraid of him.  Unless it was business or pleasure, Gunners kept to themselves and he saw no reason to break with that habit. The only person he wanted to talk to anyway was off chasing synths or super-mutants or whatever had put a bee in the Brotherhood’s bonnet this time.

Instead, he tried to stay busy.  All of his supplies, weapons, and armor were carefully cleaned, repaired, and repacked.  Stock assigned himself daily patrols along the coastline to kill time and keep his instincts sharp, shooting mirelurks and other vermin that crossed his path.  The settlers never asked him to pitch in, but they didn’t protest when they found their firewood chopped for them and piled against their shed either. He had to work off his nerves somehow.

On the eighteenth day with no word from Val, Stock traded some of his caps for a couple of bottles of whiskey, started drinking, and didn’t stop until he woke up still half drunk to daylight and the sound of raised voices outside.

“The Minutemen?  Don’t make me laugh,” a rough voice sneered.  “Those clowns couldn’t protect you from a mirelurk and, anyway, they ain’t here.”

Stock growled irritably into the wet patch of drool under his cheek and wrapped a thick arm over his face to try and block out the light.  His head was pounding and his mouth tasted like he had gone down on a particularly rotten ghoul. Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t his and he had enough of his own.  Let the civvies deal with their own business.

“If you folks know what’s good for you, you’ll buy into some real protection and give us what we asked for.  Easy as that.”

Fucking raiders, Stock realized, curling a lip contemptuously.  It would have to be raiders, because no one else would be stupid or desperate enough to squeeze caps out of a bunch of scruffy yokels on the ass end of the Commonwealth like this.

 _Give them what they want, it's not worth dying for_ , he thought, gritting his teeth as the shrill, frightened voice of one of the women assaulted his ears.

“We don’t have anything of value. We’re barely scraping by.”

“See, I think you’re holding out on us.  That’s not going to make the Boss happy. When the Boss ain’t happy, people die.”

 _Fuck._  Stock had had enough.  He rolled, rising unevenly to his knees and fumbling for the pistol next to his mattress.  There was only one language that raiders understood and clearly he was going to have to be the one to send them packing if he wanted any god damn peace.

“Just leave us alone!”

“Look, either you cough up the caps now or we won’t be asking nicely when--”

Every single head - the four raiders in their battered leathers and rusted out junk armor as well as the five adult settlers - turned in surprise when Stock stumbled out of the ramshackle house into the midst of the conflict shirtless, furious, and with his gun already leveled at the nearest intruder.

“I’m trying to sleep,” he roared.  “Shut _the fuck_ up!”

He fired at point blank range before any of them could make a move.  The stunned raider’s head snapped back from the explosion in a spray of blood and skull fragments and pandemonium descended upon the beach.  

The children shrieked.  The settlers hit the ground and scurried for safety.  The first barrage of return fire grazed his left shoulder and side, but even hungover, Stock’s aim was better than the chemed out wrecks in front of him.  Two more collapsed onto the sand with gaping holes in their faces as the last raider turned and darted for cover behind a stack of old tractor tires nearby.  

The kid didn’t make it.

As the echo of gunfire faded, Stock looked around, still fuming as he tried to stay on his feet.  Blood was leaking down his side and his ribs and shoulder felt like they were on fire, but he was alive and the loudmouth raiders were dead.  And he badly, badly needed a long piss and another drink.

Well, three of the raiders were dead, anyway.  The last one had taken two shots in the back and was still alive, groaning and writhing in the dirt.  Stock gritted his teeth, gripped his pistol, and staggered over to the fallen raider. He kicked the moron’s gun into the scrub brush before shoving him onto his back and taking aim at the sobbing young man’s forehead.  Best to make it quick.

He glared down into the kid’s terrified eyes and blood-spattered face - and hesitated.

A thought flashed across his mind, bubbling to the surface under the influence of the whiskey still in his veins.  This is what he must have looked like to Val that day. Some poor dumb bastard who followed the wrong orders and got himself into a fight too big for him and was about to die for it.  He remember the pity in her eyes. He remembered the way that she had touched his scars in the dim light of the hotel room in Goodneighbor as if she would have lifted them right off of his skin if she could have and taken that pain and those memories away.

_I could save you.  If someone was waiting on you, I could send you back to them._

Stock stared at the younger man, who was literally pissing himself now waiting for the final gunshot, and sighed as he felt his anger drain away.

“Hey!” he rapped out sternly, turning to where the settlers were emerging from their hiding places. They froze like radstags in a spotlight.  “There’s a stimpack in the right forward pouch on my harness. Bring it here.”

Either out of fear for what he might shoot next or gratitude, one of the women hurried into the main house, returning a few seconds later with the stimpack.  She handed it off to Stock and fled. He hunkered down, showing it to the kid with a pointed scowl.

“You’re lucky you caught me in a good mood,” he snapped before uncapping the stim with his teeth and plunging the needle into the raider’s chest less gently than he could have.

The effect was near instantaneous, as it always had been for Stock.  The raider gasped. A little of the color returned to his face and the blood stopped oozing out of his tattered leathers.  His brown eyes fixed on Stock, confused. Stock reached out to him, grasping him firmly by the leather jacket as he leaned his face down close, emphasizing every word of what he said next with the full menacing growl of the Gunner sergeant that he had been only a few days before.

“Unfuck your life, asshole.  Now get the hell out of my sight.”

The raider did not need to be told twice.  He scrambled to his feet and hurried off, limping for all he was worth until he disappeared over a rise in the ruined landscape.  Only then did Stock turn and trudge past the broken corpses in the dirt and the shocked expressions of the settlers to find his bed once again.

He was aggravatingly sober.  

As he lowered himself down onto the mattress with a painful grunt, Stock grabbed at one of the discarded whiskey bottles and was pleased to find that there was about a finger left in the bottom of it.  Thank God or Atom or who the fuck ever for small miracles. He finished off the burning liquor, prodded his wounds, decided that they weren’t serious enough to bother about until later, and then stretched back out in the glorious afternoon silence.

When he woke again, he found that the settlers had left a plate piled with food, another bottle of whiskey, and a stimpack next to him.

~~0~~

Val arrived three days later to find him helping the settlers put a new roof on one of the shacks.  

At first, Stock thought that the power armored figure tromping up the road was just one of the Brotherhood patrols that he had spotted from time to time on his daily rounds, but then he realized that the soldier was alone.  His heart leapt in his chest as the figure stopped in the yard and removed her helm, revealing the face that he had been aching to see for the last three weeks.

If she hadn’t been in power armor - hell, even if he could have reached her face up there through her rig - he would have kissed her then and there.

Stock wasn’t the only one who was happy to see Val.  The settlers gathered around quickly, calling her “General” and ushering her over to the communal fire pit as if she were some figure of legend once she had ejected from her armor.  She had brought them some much needed medical supplies as well as a few other odds and ends, but it was more than that. It was obvious to Stock that these people genuinely respected her and her concern for them was evident as well.  He watched as Val moved among the group with ease, smiling, laughing, catching up on the latest news and passing on her own, and it stirred something bittersweet inside of him.

Over the past few days since the incident with the raiders, for the first time, he had experienced what it was like to actually be welcome somewhere - not as an inconvenient necessity or a grudging ally, but actually wanted.  Respected instead of feared. The settlers gave him his space, but they didn’t avoid him anymore. They smiled when they saw him, invited him to join them at meal times. That was Val’s life, he knew. That was her influence. Caught in her gravity, Stock knew that it could become his life, too, and he had no idea what to do with that.

As the settlers broke from their discussions, moving to start a meal for the their guest, she approached him.  The warm, familiar affection of her hand as it slid around his arm - the same gesture that had first made him burn for her that cold night in Goodneighbor when he had walked her back to the hotel - lifted the burden of the torturous wait from his shoulders.  

He followed her down to the waterline and walked with her along the beach a ways from the settlement.  The air was cool and the only sound around them was the hiss of the surf and the distant cry of birds. For once, the world felt peaceful.

“I hear,” Val observed with a smile, “that someone took out a bunch of raiders single-handed and saved the settlement while I was gone.  You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Stock shrugged, masking a grin of his own.  The scene had evidently made an impression on the settlers and the story became a little more embellished every time someone told it.  He knew that he had been drunk and lucky that the raiders weren’t better prepared, but if Angelface was impressed, he wasn’t about to tell her that.

“They were keeping me awake.”

She laughed.  The sound hit his ears like water on dry earth and Stock drank it in.

“I suppose that the Minutemen have you to thank for clearing out nearly every mirelurk, molerat, and bloatfly on this stretch of the coast as well?”

“You were gone a long time, Angelface.  A man’s got to blow off steam somehow.”

She stopped then, looking up at him.  Stock met the kiss halfway as her arms slid around him.  Her fingers pushed into the stubble of his hair, that same intimate gesture that had captivated him the first time that he had kissed her and Stock felt himself unravel into the reality of her return at last.

Not a day had passed while she was gone that he hadn’t thought of her like this.  Not a night went by when he didn’t close his eyes imagining her soft warmth curled against him in the dark.  The certainty now that - by some miraculous, unfathomable luck that he would never understand - she had spent those days thinking of him, too, made him hers completely.

“You had me worried,” he told her afterwards. “I was about a day or two away from heading out to find you myself.”

He felt her tense very slightly beneath his palms.  Some unpleasant memory from her field work, he guessed. He would get the story later if she wanted to tell it.

“There were . . . delays,” she explained at last. “This was a harder mission than I had planned.  It’s not over yet, but I have some time while preparations are being made. I came as soon as I could get away.”

She wouldn’t look up at him.  Stock watched her shift, toying with the collar of his jacket and smoothing a hand over his chest.

“I missed you.”

“Couldn’t find any half dead Gunners to patch up this time so you thought you’d come see me, huh?” he teased her, although he couldn’t hide his smile anymore.

She shot him a look for that, but there was a vulnerability in the expression that made Stock soften his touch.  He traced the orbit of her cheekbone gently.

“That so hard to admit, sweetness?”

She placed her hand over his for a long moment and then sighed.

“Until you, I had never been with anyone but my husband.  That night - I just wanted to be touched again.  I wanted to forget for awhile. I knew that you needed the same thing, and I knew that you would be gone the next morning.  I couldn’t get attached to you, so it wouldn’t be leaving Nate behind. I didn’t expect it to be like that. I didn’t expect this.”

Stock pulled her in, feeling her press her cheek against his shoulder hard.  He leaned his face against her hair, thinking. Words were not his strong point, but he knew that Val needed them right now.  Finally, he raked her hair back from her face, wiping away a tear that had slipped down with his thumb.

“I’m not going to replace him,” he told her, letting her collect herself at her own speed. “But if someone loved me like that, I’d want better for them than beating themselves up over my memory.”

She nodded and then smiled weakly as she took his hand, squeezing it in her own.

“I want to try.  And the world seems determined to throw us together.”  She took a deep breath and then exhaled it as she looked up at him.  “But this could get very complicated.”

He had a place in the Brotherhood, Val explained.  She had convinced the powers that be that he was worth taking a chance on, although he would be watched very carefully for a long time.  He could return to the airport with her for processing. The news was instant relief to Stock. He had been wondering what the hell he would do if she never came back or the Brotherhood passed on him, but he could see from her face that the news was not all good.

“I would be your sponsor and you would be assigned under Danse for the time being.  Our mission is - well, complex, let’s just say that for now. An extra hand with experience in the Commonwealth would be welcome.  It was made very clear to me, though, that fraternization would be completely unacceptable under those circumstances. You wouldn’t be an Initiate forever - with your skills, you would probably advance faster than most.  In the meantime, as soon as we step through the airport gates, you and I can’t be anything but soldiers. Not until we’re out of the same command.”

Stock felt his heart sink, but he controlled his expression.  She had been frank with him about this possibility from the beginning - that it could end up being a choice between the Brotherhood and her - and he wouldn’t show her disappointment when she had worked hard on his behalf.  He had sworn to her that he would wait for however long it took if it came down to it. As much as he hated the idea of her being so close and still out of his reach, he would make good on that promise.

“If that’s how it has to be.”

A peculiar look came over her face and she cocked her head suddenly, a thought striking her.

“Unless,” she proposed, “you would consider joining the Minutemen instead?”

It was all Stock could do not to laugh, but she was serious.  His unit had been part of the surge at Quincy when the Gunners had put the final nail in the Minutemen’s coffin last time.  He’d heard rumors that they had reorganized, but after that catastrophic beat down he had thought that it was wasted effort.  Too little too late - until he’d learned from the settlers that Val was the one leading the charge.

Angelface was full of surprises.  And it sounded like something she’d be a part of.  The woman seemed to have a heart big enough to hold the entire Commonwealth in it and a will to match.  If anyone could make it work, she could.

And if anyone had told him in Quincy that one day the Minutemen would rise out of those ashes and not only would he consider joining up, he’d be sleeping with their General, Stock would have laughed in their face.  But then, he would never have believed half of the things that had happened to him since meeting Angelface either.

The Brotherhood would be a solid job, but it was Val that he wanted.  If it meant spending his days shooting molerats and making sure the local color played nice, so be it.

“Wouldn’t that still be fraternization, General?” he asked shrewdly, playing the hard sell.

“My army, my rules,” she shrugged, but then continued.  “Honestly, I could use the help, Stock. I can’t be everywhere and these southern settlements are a mess.  If I knew that someone like you was keeping an eye on things down here while Garvey looked after the northern sector, I could focus on taking down the Institute with the Brotherhood and this would be a much shorter war.”

“Either way, looks like my woman’s going to outrank me,” he observed gruffly, but she knew he was teasing her now.  She was smiling, expectantly, and he sighed. “Hell. Why not? Should I start calling you ‘ma’am’ now or do you want to wait til I’ve got the uniform and one of those goofy crank rifles?”

“I think,” she deliberated, the skin on Stock’s neck and back prickling and his belly heating as Val stepped toward him and allowed her fingers hook suggestively into his belt, “that there ought to be a full inspection first.  If we’re being thorough.”

And, God, how he lived for those inspections.  

As the weeks and months went on, Stock made a place for himself among the settlers, built walls, protected supply routes, and stepped in to solve drunken disputes.  He discovered a talent in himself for recruiting the ragged selvage of the Commonwealth - the burned out raiders, the disaffected mercenaries, the psycho junkies - and he worked to turn them into a fighting force that even the Gunners began to avoid eventually.  His gaggle of reprobates turned to better purpose prompted someone to call him the Warden of Nordhagen Beach and the name stuck.  Better a Gunner than a raider.  Better a Warden than a Gunner.  But through all that, Stock was never happier than the days when he would arrive back at the little settlement on the bay to find a suit of Brotherhood power armor standing outside of his house and Angelface waiting for him inside.

It had been a good run after all.  And he had no regrets.


End file.
